In the telecommunications and networking field, a steady trend has been to fit more optical fiber ports into the same area of a product, resulting in an increasing density of optical fiber ports in such products. Hence, the optical fibers plugged into these ports are continually arranged in tighter and denser configurations. Such configurations present difficulties for those looking to remove optical fibers from, or insert optical fibers into, ports in the faceplates of telecommunications and networking devices.
Many optical fiber connectors, such as the LC (Lucent Connector) connector, are configured to be engaged or disengaged using the human hand, such as by using the end of the finger or fingernail. In light of the high density of ports described above, the use of the human hand to interact with optical fibers and their connectors has become quite difficult. These difficulties are further compounded by the fact that when the need arises to service an optical port, it is often important not to interfere or even more critically, not to disconnect the optical cables surrounding the port being serviced, in order to avoid the adverse effects of the unintentional or unwanted disturbance of the cables in the surrounding ports.
In the same field, SFP (Small Form Factor Pluggable) modules are also used in telecommunications and networking products. Similarly to the LC connector, an SFP module is designed to be manipulated by the human hand, but such manipulation is hampered by the density of the optical ports on networking and communications devices.
There are a number of tools which have been developed to address the need for accessing optical connectors in telecommunications and networking devices. However, most of these tools are designed similarly to large sets of tweezers and have a movement similar to pliers, in order to mimic a clamping action of the thumb and forefinger. Such a mechanism requires a certain range of motion to be used. Accordingly, due to these spatial and motion requirements of the workspace, the geometry and mechanics of these tools are not compatible with working on devices with dense arrangements of optical ports.
Clearly, there is a need for a tool which can aid in servicing devices with optical ports, such as telecommunications and networking devices, by allowing the user to reach into arrangements of densely packed optical fibers to both unlatch the connector of an optical fiber and remove the optical fiber or to insert an optical fiber and engage the connector, as the tool of the present application allows. Further, there is a need for a tool which can interact with an SFP module to allow for the disengagement and removal of such a module from a densely packed faceplate.